National Guards themselves could not be sent away from the city, though
they were often an encumbrance rather than a help, and could not possibly
have carried on the work of defence had they been left to their own
resources.

Besides troops, so long as the railway trains continued running,
additional military stores and supplies of food, flour, rice, biscuits,
preserved meats, rolled day by day into Paris. At the same time, several
illustrious exiles returned to the capital. Louis Blanc and Edgar Quinet
arrived there, after years of absence, in the most unostentatious fashion,
though they soon succumbed to the prevailing mania of inditing manifestoes
and exhortations for the benefit of their fellow-countrymen. Victor Hugo's
return was more theatrical. In those famous "Chatiments" in which he had
so severely flagellated the Third Napoleon (after, in earlier years,
exalting the First to the dignity of a demi-god), he had vowed to keep out
of France and to protest against the Empire so long as it lasted, penning,
in this connection, the famous line:

"Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-la!"

But now the Empire had fallen, and so Hugo returned in triumph to Paris.
When he alighted from the train which brought him, he said to those who
had assembled to give him a fitting greeting, that he had come to do his
duty in the hour of danger, that duty being to save Paris, which meant
more than saving France, for it implied saving the world itself--Paris
being the capital of civilization, the centre of mankind. Naturally
enough, those fine sentiments were fervently applauded by the great poet's
admirers, and when he had installed himself with his companions in an open
carriage, two or three thousand people escorted him processionally along
the Boulevards. It was night-time, and the cafes were crowded and the